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Johnny Ludlow, Fifth Series
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Johnny Ludlow, Fifth Series

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“Let them come. You are not obliged to stay at home with them,” laughed Mary.

From the Diary of Miss Preen

Monday morning.—Well, it is over. The horror of last night is over, and I have not died of it. That will be considered a strong expression, should any eye save my own see this diary: but I truly believe the horror would kill me if I were subjected many more times to it.

I went to Mary Carimon’s after our service was over in the morning, and we had a pleasant day there. The more I see of Monsieur Jules the more I esteem and respect him. He is so genuine, so good at heart, so simple in manner. Miss Perry is very agreeable; not so young as I had thought—thirty last birthday, she says. Her English is good and refined, and that is not always the case with the English teachers who come over to France—the French ladies who engage them cannot judge of our accent.

Miss Perry and I left together a little before ten. She wished me good-night in the Rue Tessin, Madame Deauville’s house lying one way, mine another. The horror began to come over me as I crossed the Place Ronde, which had never happened before. Stay; not the horror itself, but the dread of it. An impulse actually crossed me to ring at Madame Sauvage’s, and ask Mariette to accompany me up the entry, and stand at my open door whilst I went in to light the candle. But I could see no light in the house, not even in madame’s salon, and supposed she and Mariette might be gone to bed. They are early people on Sundays, and the two young men have their latch-keys.

I will try to overcome it this time, I bravely said to myself, and not allow the fear to keep me halting outside the door as it has done before. So I took out my latch-key, put it straight into the door, opened it, went in, and closed it again. Before I had well reached the top of the passage and felt for the match-box on the slab, I was in a paroxysm of horror. Something, like an icy wind coming up the passage, seemed to flutter the candle as I lighted it. Can I have left the door open? I thought, and turned to look. There stood Edwin Fennel. He stood just inside the door, which appeared to be shut, and he was looking straight at me with a threatening, malignant expression on his pale face.

“Oh! have you come home to-night?” I exclaimed aloud. For I really thought it was so.

The candle continued to flicker quickly as if it meant to go out, causing me to glance at it. When I looked up again Mr. Fennel was gone. It was not himself who had been there; it was only an illusion.

Exactly as he had seemed to appear to me the night before he and Nancy returned from London in December, so he had appeared again, his back to the door, and the evil menace on his countenance. Did the appearance come to me as a warning? or was the thing nothing but a delusion of my own optic nerves?

I dragged my shaking limbs upstairs, on the verge of screaming at each step with the fear of what might be behind me, and undressed and went to bed. For nearly the whole night I could not sleep, and when I did get to sleep in the morning I was tormented by a distressing dream. All, all as it had been that other night from three to four months ago.

A confused dream, no method in it. Several people were about—Nancy for one; I saw her fair curls. We all seemed to be in grievous discomfort and distress; whilst I, in worse fear than this world can know, was ever striving to hide myself from Edwin Fennel, to escape some dreadful fate which he held in store for me. And I knew I should not escape it.

X

Like many another active housewife, Madame Carimon was always busy on Monday mornings. On the one about to be referred to, she had finished her household duties by eleven o’clock, and then sat down in her little salle-à-manger, which she also made her workroom, to mend some of Monsieur Carimon’s cotton socks. By her side, on the small work-table, lay a silver brooch which Miss Perry had inadvertently left behind her the previous evening. Mary Carimon was considering at what hour she could most conveniently go out to leave it at Madame Deauville’s when she heard Pauline answer a ring at the door-bell, and Miss Preen came in.

“Oh, Lavinia, I am glad to see you. You are an early visitor. Are you not well?” continued Madame Carimon, noticing the pale, sad face. “Is anything the matter?”

“I am in great trouble, Mary; I cannot rest; and I have come to talk to you about it,” said Lavinia, taking the sable boa from her neck and untying her bonnet-strings. “If things were to continue as they are now, I should die of it.”

Drawing a chair near to Mary Carimon, Lavinia entered upon her narrative. She spoke first of general matters. The home discomfort, the trouble with Captain Fennel regarding Nancy’s money, and the difficulty she had to keep up the indispensable payments to the tradespeople, expressing her firm belief that in future he would inevitably seize upon Nancy’s portion when it came and confiscate it. Next, she went on to tell the story of the past night—Sunday: how the old terrible horror had come upon her of entering the house, of a fancied appearance of Edwin Fennel in the passage, and of the dream that followed. All this latter part was but a repetition of what she had told Madame Carimon three or four months ago. Hearing it for the second time, it impressed Mary Carimon’s imagination. But she did not speak at once.

“I never in my life saw anything plainer or that looked more life-like than Captain Fennel, as he stood and gazed at me from the end of the passage with the evil look on his countenance,” resumed Lavinia. “And I hardly know why I tell you about it again, Mary, except that I have no one else to speak to. You rather laughed at me the first time, if you remember; perhaps you will laugh again now.”

“No, no,” dissented Mary Carimon. “I did not put faith in it before, believing you were deceived by the uncertain light in the passage, and were, perhaps, thinking of him, and that the dream afterwards was merely the result of your fright; nothing else. But now that you have had a second experience of it, I don’t doubt that you do see this spectre, and that the dream follows as a sequence to it. And I think,” she added, slowly and emphatically, “that it has come to warn you of some threatened harm.”

“I seem to see that it has,” murmured Lavinia. “Why else should it come at all? I wish I could picture it to you half vividly enough: the reality of it and the horror. Mary, I am growing seriously afraid.”

“Were I you, I should get away from the house,” said Madame Carimon. “Leave them to themselves.”

“It is what I mean to do, Mary. I cannot remain in it, apart from this undefined fear—which of course may be only superstitious fancy,” hastily acknowledged Lavinia. “If things continue in the present state—and there is no prospect of their changing–”

“I should leave at once—as soon as they arrive home,” rather sharply interrupted Mary Carimon, who seemed to like the aspect of what she had heard less and less.

“As soon as I can make arrangements. They come home to-night; I received a letter from Nancy this morning. They have been only at Pontipette all the time.”

“Only at Pontipette!”

“Nancy says so. It did as well as any other place. Captain Fennel’s motive was to hide away from the lawyers we met at the table d’hôte.”

“Have they left Sainteville, I wonder, those lawyers?”

“Yes,” said Lavinia. “On Friday I met Mr. Lockett when I was going to the Rue Lamartine, and he told me he was leaving for Calais with his friend on Saturday morning. It is rather remarkable,” she added, after a pause, “that the first time I saw that appearance in the passage and dreamed the dream, should have been the eve of Mr. Fennel’s return here, and that it is the same again now.”

“You must leave the house, Lavinia,” reiterated Madame Carimon.

“Let me see,” considered Lavinia. “April comes in this week. Next week will be Passion Week, preceding Easter. I will stay with them over Easter, and then leave.”

Monsieur Jules Carimon’s sock, in process of renovation, had been allowed to fall upon the mender’s lap. She slowly took it up again, speaking thoughtfully.

“I should leave at once; before Easter. But you will see how he behaves, Lavinia. If not well; if he gives you any cause of annoyance, come away there and then. We will take you in, mind, if you have not found a place to go to.”

Lavinia thanked her, and rearranged her bonnet preparatory to returning home. She went out with a heavy heart. Only one poor twelvemonth to have brought about all this change!

At the door of the Petite Maison Rouge, when she reached it, stood Flore, parleying with a slim youth, who held an open paper in his outstretched hand. Flore was refusing to touch the paper, which was both printed and written on, and looked official.

“I tell him that Monsieur le Capitaine is not at home; he can bring it when he is,” explained Flore to her mistress in English.

Lavinia turned to the young man. “Captain Fennel has been away from Sainteville for a few days; he probably will be here to-morrow,” she said. “Do you wish to leave this paper for him?”

“Yes,” said the messenger, evidently understanding English but speaking in French, as he contrived to slip the paper into Miss Preen’s unconscious hand. “You will have the politeness to give it to him, madame.”

And, with that, he went off down the entry, whistling.

“Do you know what the paper is, Flore?” asked Lavinia.

“I think so,” said Flore. “I’ve seen these papers before to-day. It’s just a sort of order from the law court on Captain Fennel, to pay up some debt that he owes; and, if he does not pay, the court will issue a procès against him. That’s what it is, madame.”

Lavinia carried the paper into the salon, and sat studying it. As far as she could make it out, Mr. Edwin Fennel was called upon to pay to some creditor the sum of one hundred and eighty-three francs, without delay.

“Over seven pounds! And if he does not pay, the law expenses, to enforce it, will increase the debt perhaps by one-half,” sighed Lavinia. “There may be, and no doubt are, other things at the back of this. Will he turn us out of house and home?”

Propping the paper against the wall over the mantelpiece, she left it there, that it might meet the captain’s eye on his return.

Not until quite late that evening did Madame Carimon get her husband to herself, for he brought in one of the young under-masters at the college to dine with them. But as soon as they were sitting cosily alone, he smoking his pipe before bed-time, she told him all she had heard from Lavinia Preen.

“I don’t like it, Jules; I don’t indeed,” she said. “It has made a strangely disagreeable impression on me. What is your opinion?”

Placid Monsieur Jules did not seem to have much opinion one way or the other. Upon the superstitious portion of the tale he, being a practical Frenchman, totally declined to have any at all. He was very sorry for the uncomfortable position Miss Preen found herself in, and he certainly was not surprised she should wish to quit the Petite Maison Rouge if affairs could not be made more agreeable there. As to the Capitaine Fennel, he felt free to confess there was something about him which he did not like: and he was sure no man of honour ought to have run away clandestinely, as he did, with Miss Nancy.

“You see, Jules, what the man aims at is to get hold of Nancy’s income and apply it to his own uses—and for Lavinia to keep them upon hers.”

“I see,” said Jules.

“And Lavinia cannot do it; she has not half enough. It troubles me very much,” flashed Madame Carimon. “She says she shall stay with them until Easter is over. I should not; I should leave them to it to-morrow.”

“Yes, my dear, that’s all very well,” nodded Monsieur Jules; “but we cannot always do precisely what we would. Miss Preen is responsible for the rent of that house, and if Fennel and his wife do not pay it, she would have to. She must have a thorough understanding upon that point before she leaves it.”

By the nine-o’clock train that night they came home, Lavinia, pleading a bad headache and feeling altogether out of sorts, got Flore to remain for once, and went herself to bed. She dreaded the very sight of Captain Fennel.

In the morning she saw that the paper had disappeared from the mantelpiece. He was quite jaunty at breakfast, talking to her and Nancy about Pontipette; and things passed pleasantly. About eleven o’clock he began brushing his hat to go out.

“I’m going to have a look at Griffin, and see how he’s getting on,” he remarked. “Perhaps the old man would enjoy a drive this fine day; if so, you may not see me back till dinner-time.”

But just as Captain Fennel turned out of the Place Ronde to the Rue Tessin, he came upon Charles Palliser, strolling along.

“Fine day, Mr. Charles,” he remarked graciously.

“Capital,” assented Charles, “and I’m glad of it; the old gentleman will have a good passage. I’ve just seen him off by the eleven train.”

“Seems to me you spend your time in seeing people off by trains. Which old gentleman is it now?—him from below?”

Charley laughed. “It’s Griffin this time,” said he. “Being feeble, I thought I might be of use in starting him, and went up.”

“Griffin!” exclaimed Captain Fennel. “Why, where’s he gone to?”

“To Calais. En route for Dover and–”

“What’s he gone for? When’s he coming back?” interrupted the captain, speaking like a man in great amazement.

“He is not coming back at all; he has gone for good,” said Charley. “His daughter came to fetch him.”

“Why on earth should she do that?”

“It seems that her husband, a clergyman at Kensington, fell across Major Smith last week in London, and put some pretty close questions to him about the old man, for they had been made uneasy by his letters of late. The major–”

“What business had the major in London?” questioned Captain Fennel impatiently.

“You can ask him,” said Charles equably, “I didn’t. He is back again. Well, Major Smith, being questioned, made no bones about it at all; said Griffin and Griffin’s money both wanted looking after. Upon that, the daughter came straight off, arriving here on Sunday morning; she settled things yesterday, and has carried her father away to-day. He was as pleased as Punch, poor childish old fellow, at the prospect of a voyage in the boat.”

Whether this information put a check upon any little plan Captain Fennel may have been entertaining, Charles Palliser could not positively know; but he thought he had never seen so evil an eye as the one glaring upon him. Only for a moment; just a flash; and then the face was smoothed again. Charley had his ideas—and all his wits about him; and old Griffin had babbled publicly.

Captain Fennel strolled by his side towards the port, talking of Pontipette and other matters of indifference. When in sight of the harbour, he halted.

“I must wish you good-day now, Palliser; I have letters to write,” said he; and walked briskly back again.

Lavinia and Nancy were sitting together in the salon when he reached home. Nancy was looking scared.

“Edwin,” she said, leaving her chair to meet him—“Edwin, what do you think Lavinia has been saying? That she is going to leave us.”

“Oh, indeed,” he carelessly answered.

“But it is true, Edwin; she means it.”

“Yes, I mean it,” interposed Lavinia very quietly. “You and Nancy will be better without me; perhaps happier.”

He looked at her for a full minute in silence, then laughed a little. “Like Darby and Joan,” he remarked, as he put his writing-case on the table and sat down to it.

Mrs. Fennel returned to her chair by Lavinia, who was sitting close to the window mending a lace collar which had been torn in the ironing. As usual Nancy was doing nothing.

“You couldn’t leave me, Lavinia, you know,” she said in coaxing tones.

“I know that I never thought to do so, Ann, but circumstances alter cases,” answered the elder sister. Both of them had dropped their voices to a low key, not to disturb the letter-writer. But he could hear if he chose to listen. “I began putting my things together yesterday, and shall finish doing it at leisure. I will stay over Easter with you; but go then I shall.”

“You must be cruel to think of such a thing, Lavinia.”

“Not cruel,” corrected Lavinia. “I am sorry, Ann, but the step is forced upon me. The anxieties in regard to money matters are wearing me out; they would wear me out altogether if I did not end them. And there are other things which urge upon me the expediency of departure from this house.”

“What things?”

“I cannot speak of them. Never mind what they are, Ann. They concern myself; not you.”

Ann Fennel sat twirling one of her fair silken ringlets between her thumb and finger; a habit of hers when thinking.

“Where shall you live, Lavinia, if you do leave? Take another apartment at Sainteville?”

“I think not. It is a puzzling question. Possibly I may go back to Buttermead, and get some family to take me in as a boarder,” dreamily answered Lavinia. “Seventy pounds a-year will not keep me luxuriously.”

Captain Fennel lifted his face. “If it will not keep one, how is it to keep two?” he demanded, in rather defiant tones.

“I don’t know anything about that,” said Lavinia civilly. “I have not two to keep; only one.”

Nancy chanced to catch a glimpse of his face just then, and its look frightened her. Lavinia had her back to him, and did not see it. Nancy began to cry quietly.

“Oh, Lavinia, you will think better of this; you will not leave us!” she implored. “We could not do at all without you and your half of the money.”

Lavinia had finished her collar, and rose to take it upstairs. “Don’t be distressed, Nancy,” she paused to say; “it is a thing that must be. I am very sorry; but it is not my fault. As you–”

“You can stay in the house if you choose!” flashed Nancy, growing feebly angry.

“No, I cannot. I cannot,” repeated Lavinia. “I begin to foresee that I might—might die of it.”

XI

Sainteville felt surprised and sorry to hear that Miss Preen was going to leave it to its own devices, for the town had grown to like her. Lavinia did not herself talk about going, but the news somehow got wind. People wondered why she went. Matters, as connected with the financial department of the Petite Maison Rouge, were known but imperfectly—to most people not known at all; so that reason was not thought of. It was quite understood that Ann Preen’s stolen marriage, capped by the bringing home of her husband to the Petite Maison Rouge, had been a sharp blow to Miss Preen: perhaps, said Sainteville now, she had tried living with them and found it did not answer. Or perhaps she was only going away for a change, and would return after a while.

Passion week passed, and Easter week came in, and Lavinia made her arrangements for the succeeding one. On the Tuesday in that next week, all being well, she would quit Sainteville. Her preparations were made; her larger box was already packed and corded. Nancy, of shallow temperament and elastic spirits, seemed quite to have recovered from the sting of the proposed parting; she helped Lavinia to put up her laces and other little fine things, prattling all the time. Captain Fennel maintained his suavity. Beyond the words he had spoken—as to how she expected the income to keep two if it would not keep one—he had said nothing. It might be that he hardly yet believed Lavinia would positively go.

But she was going. At first only to Boulogne-sur-Mer. Monsieur Jules Carimon had a cousin, Madame Degravier, who kept a superior boarding-house there, much patronized by the English; he had written to her to introduce Miss Preen, and to intimate that it would oblige him if the terms were made très facile. Madame had written back to Lavinia most satisfactorily, and, so far, that was arranged.

Once at Boulogne in peace and quietness, Lavinia would have leisure to decide upon her future plans. She hoped to pay a visit to Buttermead in the summer-time, for she had begun to yearn for a sight of the old place and its people. After that—well, she should see. If things went on pleasantly at Sainteville—that is, if Captain Fennel and Nancy were still in the Petite Maison Rouge, and he was enabled to find means to continue in it—then, perhaps, she might return to the town. Not to make one of the household—never again that; but she might find a little pied-à-terre in some other home.

Meanwhile, Lavinia heard no more of the procès, and she wondered how the captain was meeting it. During the Easter week she made her farewell calls. That week she was not very much at home; one or other of her old acquaintances wanted her. Major and Mrs. Smith had her to spend a day with them; the Miss Bosanquets invited her also; and so on.

One call, involving also private business, she made upon old Madame Sauvage, Mary Carimon accompanying her. Monsieur Gustave was called up to the salon to assist at the conference. Lavinia partly explained her position to them in strict confidence, and the motive, as touching pecuniary affairs, which was taking her away: she said nothing of that other and greater motive, her superstitious fear.

“I have come to speak of the rent,” she said to Monsieur Gustave, and Mary Carimon repeated the words in French to old Madame Sauvage. “You must in future look to Captain Fennel for it; you must make him pay it if possible. At the same time, I admit my own responsibility,” added Lavinia, “and if it be found totally impracticable to get it from Captain Fennel or my sister, I shall pay it to you. This must, of course, be kept strictly between ourselves, Monsieur Gustave; you and madame understand that. If Captain Fennel gained any intimation of it, he would take care not to pay it.”

Monsieur Gustave and madame his mother assured her that they fully understood, and that she might rely upon their honour. They were grieved to lose so excellent a tenant and neighbour as Miss Preen, and wished circumstances had been more kindly. One thing she might rest assured of—that they should feel at least as mortified at having to apply to her for the rent as she herself would be, and they would not leave a stone unturned to extract it from the hands of Captain Fennel.

“It has altogether been a most bitter trial to me,” sighed Lavinia, as she stood up to say farewell to madame.

The old lady understood, and the tears came into her compassionate eyes as she held Lavinia’s hands between her own. “Ay, for certain,” she replied in French. “She and her sons had said so privately to one another ever since the abrupt coming home of the strange captain to the petite maison à côté.”

On Sunday, Lavinia, accompanied by Nancy and Captain Fennel, attended morning service for the last time. She spoke to several acquaintances coming out, wishing them good-bye, and was hastening to overtake her sister, when she heard rapid steps behind her, and a voice speaking. Turning, she saw Charley Palliser.

“Miss Preen,” cried he, “my aunt wants you to come home and dine with us. See, she is waiting for you. You could not come any one day last week, you know.”

“I was not able to come to you last week, Mr. Charles; I had so much to do, and so many engagements,” said Lavinia, as she walked back to Mrs. Hardy, who stood smiling.

“But you will come to-day, dear Miss Preen,” said old Mrs. Hardy, who had caught the words. “We have a lovely fricandeau of veal, and–”

“Why, that is just our own dinner,” interrupted Lavinia gaily. “I should like to come to you, Mrs. Hardy, but I cannot. It is my last Sunday at home, and I could not well go out and leave them.”

They saw the force of the objection. Mrs. Hardy asked whether she should be at church in the evening. Lavinia replied that she intended to be, and they agreed to bid each other farewell then.

“You don’t know what you’ve lost, Miss Preen,” said Charley comically. “There’s a huge cream tart—lovely.”

Captain Fennel was quite lively at the dinner-table. He related a rather laughable story which had been told him by Major Smith, with whom he had walked for ten minutes after church, and was otherwise gracious.

After dinner, while Flore was taking away the things, he left the room, and came back with three glasses of liqueur, on a small waiter, handing one to Lavinia, another to his wife, and keeping the third himself. It was the yellow chartreuse; Captain Fennel kept a bottle of it and of one or two other choice liqueurs in the little cupboard at the end of the passage, and treated them to a glass sometimes.

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